Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are organic pollutants that are widely found in the environment. They may be found in air attached to dust particles, soil, sediments, water and food. Most PAHs enter the environment during burning of most organic materials such as coal, oil, wood, gasoline, garbage, tobacco, and petroleum. They are an important class of environmental contaminants because of their potential adverse health effects. They are known to have carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic properties.
Different water sources can be contaminated with PAHs from dry and wet deposition, road runoff, industrial waste water and petroleum spills. In addition, different extraction techniques have been applied for extracting PAHs from water samples from sea, rivers, lakes, surface, ground, industrial waste and drinking water. However, such techniques require large sample sizes and can be prohibitive in cost, making the extraction process challenging. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a simplified, economical method for measuring and extracting contaminants with high accuracy that requires only a small sample size.